This invention is concerned with cooking and salad oil compositions comprising liquid glyceride base oils and an emulsifier.
The oil and fat products used for edible purposes may be divided into two fairly distinct classes: (1) liquid oils, such as soybean, cottonseed, and olive oils; and (2) plastic fats, such as butter, margarine, shortening and lard.
The liquid vegetable oils are generally used as cooking and salad oils. In preparing green salads, a liquid cooking or salad oil is used to provide an oil coating on the basic ingredients of the salad. A solid fat or plastic shortening is not well suited for this purpose. Liquid oils are often preferred over solid fats and plastic shortenings for many cooking tasks; for example, the frying of potatoes, fish, eggs, and meat products such as cube steaks, minute steaks, and the like. In the deep frying of food products such as chicken, potatoes, and potato chips, liquid oils are frequently used. Liquid oils are exclusively used in the preparation of vinegar-and-oil salad dressings and mayonnaise where the blendability, consistency and stability of the final product is often adversely affected by solid or plastic fats or shortenings.
It is known that the blendability of salad oil in vinegar is improved by the addition of certain emulsifiers, e.g., the polyoxyethylene sorbitan monooleate. (U.S. Pat. No's. 3,415,658, December, 1968, Cunningham, et al.; and 3,355,302, Purves et al., November, 1967.) Polyoxyethylene(20)sorbitan monooleate, commonly called polysorbate 80 and sold under tradename of Tween 80, is an excellent example.
Besides providing excellent vinegar-and-oil blendability, polysorbate 80 unfortunately causes an excessive increase in absorbed fat in foodstuffs fried therein.
It is also known that certain general classes of materials such as sorbitan partial esters, polyoxyalkylene derivatives of a propylene glycol higher fatty acid ester (U.S. Pat. No. 3,767,822) and polyethoxylated ethers of sorbitan partial esters have useful emulsifying properties for plastic and liquid shortenings. For example, their use in fluid shortening for bakery products is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No's. 3,943,259, Norris, March, 1976; 3,914,452, Norris, November, 1975. Also see U.S. Pat. No. 3,767,822, Oszlanyi et al., November, 1973 for the preparation and use of polyethoxylated propylene glycol monoesters and the like in bakery products. These patents teach broad classes of materials and broad ranges of concentrations for these materials. It was not previously known that the particular esters polyoxyalkylene derivatives of propylene glycol higher fatty acid esters (POA PGE), described in this invention are useful in amounts of from 0.005% to about 1.0% by weight, in a liquid glyceride base oil to impart improved blendability but low fat absorption properties to the oil.
The above deficiencies in the prior art liquid salad and cooking oils are overcome by the liquid salad and cooking oil of this invention based on liquid base oils containing POA PGE in the amount of from about 0.005% to about 1.0% by weight of said liquid base oil.
It has now been found that liquid salad and cooking oil comprising a glyceride base oil and POA PGE emulsifier will provide improved vinegar-and-oil blendability.
A further advantage is that the liquid oil of this invention is particularly suitable for deep fat frying because the POA PGE emulsifier in the oil composition does not cause a significant increase in fat absorption in the foodstuffs fried therein.
These and other advantages will become more apparent from the detailed description of the invention.